Warfare & Tactics

So, CCP (after calls from the players) decided to reward the winning side in FW. Their first implementation was the horrific system which led to people intentionally losing systems and then occasionally 'spiking' for a mass capture of systems and massive rewards.

Avoiding the Bandwagon effect
The whole idea of course this earlier system was to reward players who put the time in before the victory and reward them after the objectives are achieved. This avoids the bandwagon effect. Because if you give rewards to any players based on the current state of the warzone (as the system is now) most (non-stupid) players will join/switch to the most rewarding side. The current system gives large advantages to anyone joining the 'winning team' and thus encourages the bandwagon or dogpile effect. If you go down, you will tend to stay down. How can we fix this?

Core Systems
As most veteran FW players know, some systems are more important than others. They are strategically better located, and/or many players use it as their base of operations. For these systems the defenders will often fight tooth and nail, and deplex them even for little rewards. This is largely a result of the new station docking rules. By restricting docking to those who control the system, many systems have gained additional value. Other systems (Ezzara is a famed one in the Minmatar-Amarr theater) are often flipped back-and-forth. Nobody really cares about them. A lot of systems fall somewhere in-between these extremes.

Would it be fair to say that capturing a 'core system' would be a more of an achievement (and should thus deliver better rewards) than some random 'flip-system' nobody cares about? I think capturing Sahtogas or Arzad, that would be a monumental achievement. And those who helped to achieve it should be rewarded appropriately. Currently capturing these two systems in on par with capturing some backwater with alts without any PvP whatsoever

1. Abandon the % bonus (or penalty) by tier
Obviously, this is a stopgap measure designed to as an alternative to the earlier failed system. As pointed out, it incentivies the dogpiling/bandwagon effect. That is not productive for a healthy competitive gaming enviroment.

2. After a system is captured, give a % bonus to all pilots who gained LP in that system (for a certain time)
This would reward the pilots that were actually there taking the plexes in those core systems, or killing people there. Then you can add a time constraint like: after capture only LP gained in that system during the last two weeks would get the % bonus to LP. This prevents people trying to ''game the system" by intentionally not capturing a system.

The extra rewards should not come in the form of a flat % bonus to everyone. It should come in a % bonus for anyone who aided in capturing a systm

3. The % bonus to LP the pilots get depends on the number of days the system was in enemy hands.
Systems increase in value the longer they are held. As the core systems are usually last to fall, this would make them the most valuable to attack. If a system is in enemy hands for more than a week, you could give a 25% bonus, more than a month: 50% bonus. 3 months: 75%, 6 months: 100%, more than a year: 200%. These are arbitratry numbers of course, given to demonstrate the general principle.

The Effects
For the current state of the war it means the longer the Gallente remain in control of the entire warzone, the more profitable it becomes to join the Caldari State and try and start capturing systems. As long as the Gallente continue defending effectively, the Caldari State players don't get any extra rewards, and both sides remain equal. But the lure of an ever-increasing reward if and when a system capture finally occurs should slowly shift the incentives to the Caldari side. This way you create a dynamic incentive designed to reward actual capture play and would give players more of a reason to join 'the losing side'.

Not only that, the system is robust against abuse, since no amount of play will increase the time the enemy holds a certain system. Two sides agreeing to flipping systems back and forth will not give you increase LP. If you want those juicy rewards, you actually have to attack the enemy where they are strongest.

This way the farmers also don't get to enjoy the fruits of those who fought hard battles over these core systems. Only the players who actually risked their ships in these high-PvP core systems will be eligble for the extra rewards. So this is also a nerf to farmers See this proposal as well.

It has been already fixed multiple times. The greed of these FW players is just outrageous. So many hours spent on fixing their precious FW, when will they just shut up and join a proper nullsec alliance?

Taking a sledgehammer to something is not fixing it. When the purpose of a fix was to get people to stop farming in FW and do more PvP and has the complete opposite effect, it is not fixing it. Not only did CCP ruin FW, they also killed the datacore market and that makes me sad.

What the heck are you guys talking about with 'FW is fail' and 'CCP ruined FW'? One side ran an extended campaign to take all the systems in their warzone, and they get the rewards for it. How is that a failure?

'But Garr, the farmers won FW for you!' No. No they did not. Sure farmers helped contest systems, but do farmers shoot at bunkers? No. Did farmers win the last few systems? Not a chance in hell. It was a concentrated force of effort made on the part of Gallente player corps.

So what's happening as we speak? Ev0ke is moving back into their old stomping grounds and forced us out of their system. The Caldari farmers are heavily contesting many systems in the warzone without much resistance because of Gallente burnout.

Do the payouts favor the victors? Heck yeah they do. As it should be. We all cried for CCP to give us something to fight for, and it seems they did. This cycle, the Gallente won. Who knows what's going to happen next year. Will Ev0ke continue their rampage and take all of the systems in the warzone? Will they be just a flash in the pan? Will they just use FW as a staging ground for an extensive 0.0 campaign? I don't know about any of that, but I DO know that everything in FW is cyclical and nothing ever stays the same.

I was not there, so let's assume I take it on face value that you did an excellent job. Then what shall you now have the benefit of having won forever?

In reality the last few systems may have taken some effort or did you just have a nice big Goon size blob?

That's because blaming the system or the game mechanics when the gameplay outcome is not what we expect is is always easyer. And when "winning" or "loosing" has consequences of course those are felt more as "wrong" by the loosing side.

Also, many of them would prefer a consenusal arena/battleground system like WoT or LoL, sporting games where basically whatever happens have no consequences. And you just reship and start again over and over... and nothing really change and nobody can be really defeated. it's one of the effect of the WOW generation landing on EvE.

But yes, FW working fine as it is: it's a middle ground between normal low-sec and null-sec. And it's fun.

my initial idea after inferno to fix the rewards system of FW and give sov a meaning is to limit the item availability of the lp shop, dependent of what systems you own.

some fancy system might unlock the faction BS, an other system the cruiser and yet another pants and some implants.

this would automatically create a situation where some systems are worth more as others. Taking the hostile system which unlocks faction cruiser would have a real strategic meaning. You could even go one step further and add the hostile faction ships to your own shop if you can hold that system.... you get the idea. To balance it properly some systems should unlock the same item. e.g having the faction frig should be easy (easy dependable systems).

(there can be multiple variations of the idea above. e.g reduced costs if you hold multiple systems which produce the same item etc)



right now. you have to take random undefendable systems to maintain a certain tier level. This alone creates a lot of problems. You basically don't WANT to take the systems since its wasted time. So what you do is to use alts... etc. Its a vicious circle. At the end of the day you have almost no time for cool stuff like engagements in core systems. At the same time you get pissed off by ships which do not want to fight since they are driven half-AFK. BUT if you simply ignore the half-AFK pve ships it makes things even worse since they contest your space and you don't want to waste more time to decontest it again.

Just this.

Having to "eat ****" and go ahead is something that - at some point - happened or will happen to any EvE player; of course enjoying it is not not required to anybody, however being able to deal with it is a requirment for an EvE player.

Otherwise, if this is a problem, for all the special snowflakes, there're more soft and cuddling games.

Farmers are definitely an issue, but in many cases there is no way to really avoid it without gimping ACTUAL FW players. My only issue is the crippling consequences that the losing side suffers from.

It is fail because it still isn't really attracting all that many players to eve. FW could be something that massively increases the number of people playing this game. Instead its more of what eve already offers in that it is a stepping stone to dull sec.

No one is asking for arenas, or lack of consequences. Those are just red herrings.

I think many people who leave eve and fw just want the game to not be so boring for so many hours. People think hey I now have the isk to buy ships and the skillpoints and skill to fly them lets get the pvp! Then they are disappointed that decent fights are so rare.

4-7 decent pvp fights in 2 hours is not too much to ask. CCP can easilly do that. It can be done in the context of achieving goals for a larger war as well. We don't need arenas or free ships. We just need to know where people are plexing so we can fight for the plexes instead of roaming around randomly for hours. Its that simple.

But ccp won't do it. They insist on making all pvp in eve the equivalent of hunting. Where you sit there in your blob and wait for a helpless deer to shoot. The problem is most people think hunting is boring.